Throughtout the years scientists have been studying the adult brain and how it works.Years of research and millions of dollars have been spent trying to understand grown ups and there behaviour. But what about the teenagers? Parents, tecahers and everbody else whose surrounded by adolecents who have asked themselves the question... "why do they do what they do, if they do it at all?"
Unfortuanley, a common answer to this question is - puberty. It is like scienctist havents actually thought about the fact that teenagers have a brain at all, and that it, just like the body, is going through tremendous changes during the teenages years. The truth is that scientist have discovered many unexpected things about the teenage brain, which opened up a whole new world for scientist around the world.
The study of the brain has made great strides over the past decade due to the development of magnetic resonance that provides accurate pictures of the living, growing brain. We once thought that adolescence is a time of profound brain growth and change, We now know that:
Between childhood and adulthood the brain's "writing diagram" becomes more complex and more efficient, especially in the brain's prefontal cortex. The greatest changes to the parts of the brain that are responsible for impulse-control, judgment, descion-making, planning, organization and involved in other functions like emotion, occur in adolescence. This area of the brain (prefrontal cortex) does not reach full maturity until around age 25!
Throughtout the years scientists have been studying the adult brain and how it works.Years of research and millions of dollars have been spent trying to understand grown ups and there behaviour. But what about the teenagers? Parents, tecahers and everbody else whose surrounded by adolecents who have asked themselves the question...
"why do they do what they do, if they do it at all?"
Unfortuanley, a common answer to this question is - puberty. It is like scienctist havents actually thought about the fact that teenagers have a brain at all, and that it, just like the body, is going through tremendous changes during the teenages years. The truth is that scientist have discovered many unexpected things about the teenage brain, which opened up a whole new world for scientist around the world.
The study of the brain has made great strides over the past decade due to the development of magnetic resonance that provides accurate pictures of the living, growing brain. We once thought that adolescence is a time of profound brain growth and change, We now know that:
Between childhood and adulthood the brain's "writing diagram" becomes more complex and more efficient, especially in the brain's prefontal cortex. The greatest changes to the parts of the brain that are responsible for impulse-control, judgment, descion-making, planning, organization and involved in other functions like emotion, occur in adolescence. This area of the brain (prefrontal cortex) does not reach full maturity until around age 25!
http://www.gracecov.com/images/teens.jpg